A farmer and her daughter died this Tuesday after a vehicle crashed into a barricade erected on a road in southwestern France. The accident, in which her husband and father was also injured, occurs in the midst of farmers’ protests in the country, a mobilization that is growing every day and generating concern within the Government of centrist Emmanuel Macron. The prime minister, Gabriel Attal, met on Monday with the main union in the sector and will do so this Tuesday with two others.
The victims, a 35-year-old farmer and her 14-year-old daughter, were run over at 5:45 a.m. during a road block in Pamiers, a town in the southwest of France located a few kilometers from the border with Spain. Both were with their 40-year-old husband and father, who was seriously injured. The death of the teenager, who was in a “critical condition”, was announced by the Foix Prosecutor’s Office at night.
The first indications are that the accident was not premeditated. The Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation for “aggravated involuntary manslaughter and aggravated injuries.” The three occupants of the vehicle have been arrested, according to the Public Ministry. The car crashed into a straw wall, erected in the context of the mobilization that has shaken the country since Thursday.
“This drama further legitimizes our struggle,” Luc Smessaert, vice president of the FNSEA agricultural union, the first in France, reacted to BFMTV. The country’s farmers have been protesting for days against rising energy costs and European environmental rules. France is the leading power in the European Union sector and is the first recipient of CAP funds, the bloc’s common agricultural policy.
Since Thursday, several highways in the country have been blocked, such as the A-64, a road that connects Toulouse, in the south, with Bayonne, in the southwest. The mobilization has spread to the entire territory, from north to south and from east to west, with tractors blocking the path with the help of bales of straw.
The main unions threaten to intensify their actions. “The magnitude of what is being prepared will not be altered by this tragedy,” said Arnaud Rousseau, president of the FNSEA, the powerful union created in 1946 and claiming 212,000 participants. “The fight continues,” he insisted on the RMC radio station.
Jérome Bayle, one of the figures of the protest movement, warned on Monday that farmers were ready to paralyze the capital, Paris, and boycott the next agricultural show in February to be heard by the authorities. The moment is key. The European elections are in June.
The Government, meanwhile, seeks to prevent the first sparks from turning into a fire. “I have asked the Government to fully mobilize to provide concrete solutions to the difficulties they face,” the president, Emmanuel Macron, said on the social networkafter the tragedy.
The Executive has already taken the first steps. The new prime minister, Gabriel Attal, met on Monday with the two major unions, but without announcing any particular measures. This Tuesday he also has meetings with other unions to try to calm the crisis.
It is his first exam since he took office on January 11, succeeding Élisabeth Borne. The Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, also participated in Monday’s meeting, who has promised a response from the Government before the end of the week.
French farmers are demanding measures ranging from administrative simplification to faster compensation in the event of disasters. The first protests began in autumn, with the overturning of signage panels at the entrance to towns to warn of the feeling of abandonment.
Discontent is fertile ground for the National Rally, the far-right party that leads the polls in France for the upcoming European elections in June. Over the weekend, its president, Jordan Bardella, traveled to the Gironde department, in the southwest, to speak with representatives of the sector. Attal did the same, about 600 kilometers further north.
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